They are the tourists that International Drive caters to. An Orange County spokesperson said shortening the street’s name would lead to needless bafflement.

“Tourists might even get confused with the word ‘I Drive’ thinking it might be ‘Information Drive,’” Doreen Overstreet said.

In case you are one of the potentially confused and don’t know what we’re talking about, International Drive is Orlando’s main tourist strip. It stretches 11.1 miles, most of it in unincorporated Orange County.

It is home to scores of hotels, restaurants, T-shirt shops, attractions and channels millions of visitors to SeaWorld, Universal and the Orange County Convention Center. I Drive has its own chamber of commerce, website and is basically an international brand.

Or should we say i brand?

Orange County or the Board of County Commissioners can rename a street by petition, Overstreet said, but it requires 75 percent of the residents or property owners on that street to approve the renaming.

If a serious “Change the Name” movement ever arose, it’s unlikely 75 percent of the businesses on I Drive would be in favor of changing the name to I Drive.

I Drive also sounds like a statement, as in, “Should I drive?” You can imagine this conversation at the rental car counter:

“Can I drive on I Drive with my Portuguese driver’s license?”

I Drive doesn’t have the panache of “International.” And considering tourists come from all over the world, the name certainly fits.

That’s sort of what the man who named it had in mind.

“I came up with International Drive because it sounded big and important,” Finley Hamilton said in a 2005 story.

He was 81 at the time, and the street he’d built on scrubby pines and palmetto thickets had long since turned to gold.

Finley was an Orlando lawyer and developer who took note in 1965 when Walt Disney announced he was building a theme park way out in southwestern Orange County.

Finley bought 10 acres of land a quarter-mile north of Sand Lake Road just east of Interstate 4. He paid $90,000 for it and people thought he was nuts.

“They called it ‘Finley’s Folly,’ everyone, all my friends,” Finley said. “They said it was in the boondocks.”

It was. But Finley thought tourists heading to Disney World would see the Hilton Inn he was planning to build, exit on Sand Lake Road and head north on his new paved road.

He built it, and they came.

“It turned out to be highly successful,” said Finley, who died in 2012.

The Hilton Inn South opened in May 1970, 17 months before Disney World opened. Three months later, Hamilton and his partner, Jack Zimmer, bought about 29 more acres for $10,000 an acre.

They soon resold the land as hotel sites for up to $200,000 an acre.

There were 11 hotels along International Drive by 1973. Then came Wet 'n Wild, the convention center, more hotels, Skull Kingdom, restaurants, attractions, gift shops, the Orlando Eye, a trolley and tourists, tourists, tourists.

If shortening it to I Drive seems like a bad idea, imagine if Finley had been able to use first choice. He wanted to name the original stretch of asphalt “Hamilton Road” but that name was already taken.

Ham Road?

Who would want to stay or drive on that?

Editor’s note: This story is part of Ask Orlando, a new feature in which we ask readers to ask questions, we hunt down the answers and report back. If you have a question you’d like us to report on, you can fill out the form below, or head to OrlandoSentinel.com/AskOrlando.

David Whitley is a member of our Community Conversations Team. He can be reached at dwhitley@orlandosentinel.com